Ok, I’ve finally processed how I experienced this, and it’s a big deal. I grew up hearing stories from my father and grandfather about the Soviet Union, but this was the first time I truly understood them, like the difference between hearing stories about having a child and actually holding your own newborn. Like an ancestral alarm. It’s devastating. Everything in me is screaming to divest from the region that I’ve poured my adult life into to survive. The feeling of loss is immeasurable, and the casual “bye” just makes it worse. The damage from the lack of empathy here will create a cycle of attacks that take decades to undo and will bloody the hands of everyone around me, there are no sidelines in my line of work. This also isn’t about taxes, the cost of reorienting my life is infinitely greater. It’s now primal and existential.